In 1966, some Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers reckoned that they could develop computer vision as a summer project, perhaps even get a few smart undergrads to complete the task. The world has been working on the problem ever since. Computer vision is where computers recognize objects like people do. It's one of a number of tasks we consider essential for generalized artificial intelligence, in which machines can act and reason as humans do. While we've been making some considerable headway in computer vision, especially in recent years, that it has taken 50 years longer than expected shows why AI (artificial intelligence) is such as difficult and elusive goal.

Fresh off a nearly perfect run predicting the outcome of World Cup futbol matches, Microsoft's digital assistant, Cortana, has focused her abilities on picking the winners of NFL football games. Need help predicting whether or not the Seahawks will hold off the Green Bay Packers? The kicker, of course, is that you'll need access to Cortana, Microsoft's digital assistant. And for right now, that means a Windows Phone 8.1 phone, either one that's been upgraded via Microsoft's developer program or as part of the "Cyan" rollouts that Microsoft and its carriers are pushing to vanilla Windows Phone 8 Lumia phones. For one, asking Cortana about the outcome of a particular game is a bit like a magic spell: You'll need to ask Cortana "Who will win Team A or Team B?" and she will provide an answer.

If you ask Siri, the virtual personal assistant on the iPhone 4S, why it's so great, it answers with disarming humility: "I am what I am." But industry insiders say there's a little more to it than that. Siri goes well beyond voice recognition, they say, by applying powerful artificial intelligence and statistical analysis to decipher the meaning behind questioners' sometimes jumbled sentences. Add to that Siri's dry wit and you have the kind of breakout hit that will propel new uses of similar technology on your phone, tablet, and even your PC, experts say. Services like Siri are "natural language processing" apps that use statistical models to figure out what you probably meant to say when your pronunciation or word choice is garbled.

Microsoft said Wednesday that it has added natural-language search to its internal Windows 8 Smart Search. Users can write out queries as sentences or thoughts, rather than try to puzzle out the correct search term. Users must be "updated to the latest release of Windows 8," the Bing Relevance Team said in a blog post. Users apparently don't need to download an update; the improvements will just appear. "One of the most exciting things about this feature is that it demonstrates how the Bing platform makes our Windows product more useful and helpful without having to update the Windows client software," the Bing team wrote.

In the battle for hearts, minds, and intelligent helpfulness, Microsoft plans to wage war against Siri and Google Now with the help of the most full-featured digital assistant ever imagined. No, not Microsoft Bob--stop your snickering--but Cortana, the faithful, blue-tinged AI that helped the Master Chief win the war against the Covenant hordes in the legendary Halo series of video games. Early leaks of the impending Windows Phone 8.1 update have featured an app dubbed "zCortana," and according to ZDNet, WPCentral, and The Verge, Cortana is the codename for a voice-controlled, adaptable digital assistant--kind of like Siri, but smarter. A Windows Phone 8.1 build acquired by The Verge shows that Microsoft is already testing Cortana's ability to pull in notifications, weather and location info, calendar details, and more, and "she" also has access to the phone's Bluetooth capabilities. Bing's Satori engine--a massive knowledge database, named after the first step on the Buddhist path to enlightenment--is said to be the brains behind Cortana.

Robin Li, head of China's web giant Baidu, unveils the firm's intelligent digital assistant, Duer. When Andrew Ng joined Google from Stanford University in 2011, he was among a trickle of artificial-intelligence (AI) experts in academia taking up roles in industry. Five years later, demand for expertise in AI is booming -- and a torrent of researchers is following Ng's lead. The laboratories of tech titans Google, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM and Baidu (China's web-services giant) are stuffed with ex-university scientists, drawn to private firms' superior computing resources and salaries. "Some people in academia blame me for starting part of this," says Ng, who in 2014 moved again to become chief scientist at Baidu, working at the company's research lab in California's Silicon Valley.

In a previous column I mentioned the Amazon Echo ($179 on Amazon.com) as a useful device for listening to music and podcasts. But, after using the Echo for the past month and hearing others talk about it at CES, I've come to the conclusion that it's far more than that. I bought the Echo as a music player because I was impressed at how easy it is to use your voice to play songs from your own music library that you've uploaded to Amazon Music along with the million or so songs on Amazon Prime Music, your Pandora playlists and the podcasts, music and online radio stations on TuneIn and iHeartRadio. You address the Echo as "Alexa," Amazon's persona that's equivalent to Siri or the OK Google voice commands for Android devices. Amazon also gives you the option to address Echo as "Amazon," but I prefer calling her Alexa.

The arms race in Silicon Valley is on for artificial intelligence. Facebook is working on a virtual personal assistant that can read people's faces and decide whether or not to let them in your home. Google is investing in the technology to power self-driving cars, identify people on its photo service and build a better messaging app. Now Apple is adding to its artificial intelligence arsenal. The iPhone maker purchased Emotient, a San Diego maker of facial expression recognition software that can detect emotions to assist advertisers, retailers, doctors and many other professions.

Ask Ziggy, the world's most advanced Natural Speech search engine for mobile devices, has closed a $5 million round of funding with a publicly traded multinational corporation and has expanded its list of strategic partners. Working closely with Nuance Communications, Ask Ziggy will use its most recent round of funding to deliver downloadable mobile apps for nearly all Android, Apple and Microsoft mobile devices by Q3 2012. "Each major funding event is a milestone in the growth of a rapidly developing company like Ask Ziggy," explained Shai Leib, CEO and Ask Ziggy Visionary. "Although we've had prior key investments via Sunbelt Technologies Management, when major publicly traded multinational companies begin to recognise the value of Ask Ziggy's cloud-based contextual search solutions, as was the case with this strategic investment, we have to celebrate. Ask Ziggy's Natural Speech search engine empowers and expands the user experience and convenience for all mobile devices, not merely cellphones. Speaking directly into a device and getting a voice reply, with zero typing required, is here at last. This funding will now enable Ask Ziggy to deliver multi-language, accent-independent, Natural Speech personal assistant apps running on all devices, including cellular handsets, tablets and even computing headsets, which will immediately change our world."

Apple's next iPhone will be always listening to the people around it, ready for its digital assistant to help out if it is called. Saying "Hey Siri" to the phone at any time will wake it up and get it ready to respond to requests, according to new rumours ahead of the iPhone 6s launch this evening. That event is thought to have cast Siri in a leading role -- as well as the changes to the iPhone's "Hey Siri" feature, the company is expected to show off its new search capabilities as well as giving it a central role in its new Apple TV. The company teased the central role of Siri in its invitations for the event, which came with the tagline "Hey Siri, give us a hint". Apple already lets people call up the digital assistant by saying "Hey Siri" when the phone is plugged in.